Adolf Jülicher (26 January 1857 – 2 August 1938) was a German

scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researche ...

and

biblical The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

exegete Exegesis ( ; from the Greek , from , "to lead out") is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text. The term is traditionally applied to the interpretation of Biblical works. In modern usage, exegesis can involve critical interpretations ...

. Specifically, he was the Professor of Church History and New Testament Exegesis, at the

University of Marburg The Philipps University of Marburg (german: Philipps-Universität Marburg) was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Protestant university in the wor ...

. He was born in

Falkenberg Falkenberg is a locality and the seat of Falkenberg Municipality, Halland County, Sweden, with 27,813 inhabitants in 2019 (out of a municipal total of about 45,000). It is located at the mouth of river Ätran. The name consists of the Swedish ...

near

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

and died in

Marburg Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approximate ...

. Jülicher differentiated between

Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

' parables and allegories. His "one-point' analysis identified parables as having a single point of reference to the real world, rather than several, as in an allegory. His approach has not held up completely to later research, but it remains foundational to all investigations of parables and allegories.

Ideas

The Messianic Secret

Jülicher, along with

Johannes Weiss Johannes Weiss (December 13, 1863 – August 24, 1914) was a German Protestant theologian and biblical exegete. He was a member of the history of religions school. History Weiss was born in Kiel as son of Bernhard Weiss. A perpetual scholar, he ...

, was instrumental in forging a consensus position on the new theory of "

Messianic Secret The Messianic Secret is a motif in the Gospel of Mark, in which Jesus is portrayed as commanding his followers to maintain silence about his Messianic mission. Attention was first drawn to this motif in 1901 by William Wrede. Part of Wrede's theo ...

" motif in the Gospel of Mark. Before Jülicher,

William Wrede Georg Friedrich Eduard William Wrede (; 10 May 1859 – 23 November 1906) was a German Lutheran theologian. Biography Wrede was born at Bücken in the Kingdom of Hanover. He became an associate professor at Breslau in 1893, and full professor in ...

had theorized that the historical

had not claimed to be the

Messiah In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; , ; , ; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of ''mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach'' ...

, but that the early church had claimed that he was. According to this theory, the author of Mark's gospel had invented the idea of the "Messianic Secret", whereby Jesus attempted to hide his identity, and only revealed it to a very few insiders. Conservative interpreters of Mark's gospel, exemplified by William Sanday and

Albert Schweitzer Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian-German/French polymath. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. A Lutheran minister, Schweit ...

, believed instead that Mark's portrayal of Jesus was largely historical. Scholarship was strictly divided for a time, with neither side considering the other's views at all valid.John M. DePoe, ''The Messianic Secret In The Gospel of Mark: Historical Development and Value of Wrede's Theory'', http://www.johndepoe.com/Messianic_secret.pdf . Jülicher helped to bridge this divide by suggesting that while many of Wrede's suggestions were correct, other aspects of the Messianic Secret may have been historical. He called Mark's portrayal of Jesus as a taciturn Messiah "half-historical", and allowed for the analysis of some of Mark's presentation as an accurate depiction (while, at the same time, warning against an uncritical acceptance of these same statements). This helped pave the way to many post-Bultmann theories in the 1950s.

Parables

Jülicher also helped to change the understanding of the

parables of Jesus The parables of Jesus are found in the Synoptic Gospels and some of the non-canonical gospels. They form approximately one third of his recorded teachings. Christians place great emphasis on these parables, which they generally regard as the wo ...

among scholars, emphasizing that there was usually a single point of comparison between the story and what it represented.Adolf Jülicher, ''Die Gleichnisreden Jesu'' (2 vols; Tübingen: Mohr iebeck 1888, 1899). He made a distinction between

parable A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, w ...

and

allegory As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory th ...

, claiming that a true allegory was a literary type of which Jesus was not aware and did not use. All specific allegorical interpretations of the parables, whether by later church fathers or in the gospels themselves, must have come from sources other than the historical Jesus. In contrast, most

Medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

scholars saw the parables as elaborate

allegories As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory th ...

, with each aspect representing something specific.

John P. Meier John Paul Meier (August 8, 1942 – October 18, 2022) was an American biblical scholar and Roman Catholic priest. He was author of the series ''A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus'' (5 v.), six other books, and more than 70 articles ...

, ''

A Marginal Jew John Paul Meier (August 8, 1942 – October 18, 2022) was an American biblical scholar and Roman Catholic priest. He was author of the series ''A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus'' (5 v.), six other books, and more than 70 articles ...

'' Volume II, Doubleday, 1994. Later, scholars such as

C. H. Dodd Charles Harold Dodd (1884–1973) was a Welsh New Testament scholar and influential Protestant theologian. He is known for promoting "realized eschatology", the belief that Jesus' references to the kingdom of God meant a present reality rathe ...

and

Joachim Jeremias Joachim Jeremias (20 September 1900 – 6 September 1979) was a German Lutheran theologian, scholar of Near Eastern Studies and university professor for New Testament studies. He was abbot of Bursfelde, 1968–1971. He was born in Dresden and sp ...

built on Jülicher's work, emphasizing each parable's significance in regard to the " Kingdom of God". Nearly all subsequent scholarship has followed Jülicher's ideas in this, although some have seen a slightly wider range of comparisons that he proposed.

Other Ideas

In his thorough ''Introduction to the New Testament'', composed in 1904, Jülicher wrote at length about many aspects of

Biblical criticism Biblical criticism is the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible. During the eighteenth century, when it began as ''historical-biblical criticism,'' it was based on two distinguishing characteristics: (1) the concern to ...

. This influential work was still being discussed as contemporary thirty years later. In this text, he gives support to the

two-source hypothesis The two-source hypothesis (or 2SH) is an explanation for the synoptic problem, the pattern of similarities and differences between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It posits that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke were ba ...

, referring to Q as "a collection of the sayings of Jesus, composed without any exercise in conscious art." He held that parts were devised before Mark, and parts after Mark, with no standard version ever existing. Although scholarship on Q is deeply divided and still without consensus, most researchers today believe Q to have been organized, either according to a series of catchwords or as a primitive liturgy, and later editions acknowledge this fact.Alan K. Kirk, ''The Composition of the Sayings Source: Genre, Synchrony, and Wisdom Redaction in Q'' (BRILL, 1998). His ''Introduction'' was also of interest in its very late dating of the

Epistle of James The Epistle of James). is a general epistle and one of the 21 epistles ( didactic letters) in the New Testament. James 1:1 identifies the author as "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" who is writing to "the twelve tribes ...

, arguing that it was a disorganized collection of ethical exhortations written after even

I Clement The First Epistle of Clement ( grc, Κλήμεντος πρὸς Κορινθίους, Klēmentos pros Korinthious, Clement to Corinthians) is a letter addressed to the Christians in the city of Corinth. Based on internal evidence some scholars sa ...

. Most of the body of ''An Introduction'' succinctly described the latest biblical scholarship of its day.

Works in English

*''An introduction to the New Testament'' (translated by Janet Penrose Ward, 1904) *''

Encyclopaedia Biblica ''Encyclopaedia Biblica: A Critical Dictionary of the Literary, Political and Religion History, the Archeology, Geography and Natural History of the Bible'' (1899), edited by Thomas Kelly Cheyne and J. Sutherland Black, is a critical encyclopedi ...

'' (1903) - contributor

References